"I feel so lucky to have shared that joy with her, to have had the time to leaf through bridal magazines together and talk about the wedding," Cate wrote in an article forGlamour magazine this month. "Even though I've had to plan the wedding without her, I feel blessed because, in her last weeks, she told me she was comforted to know I'd set forth on my own life path, with someone she loved and respected, and with whom she truly believed I would be happy."

Cate, 29, and her beau, a surgical fellow in Washington, D.C., got engaged two weeks prior to Elizabeth's passing.

"Mom advised me to think carefully about the ceremony: It could be an important map, she said, for our life together," Cate wrote in Glamour, adding that the mother-daughter duo settled on a "rustic romantic" theme for the couple's wedding weekend, which will culminate with an outdoor reception at the family's 100-acre Chapel Hill, N.C. estate.

Cate's father, disgraced former North Carolina senator John Edwards, will walk her down the aisle Saturday. Her 13-year-old sister, Emma Claire, will be maid of honor, while their brother, Jack, 11, will be a groomsman.